In Pursuit of a New American Industrialism

The Bloggers Did It: A New Medium's Impact

The other day I posted some musings about an analysis of TIF projects in Kansas City. The city had just released a pretty damning document detailing how the projects in question had fallen hundreds of millions of dollars short of revenue projections.

Impact? Hard to say. But yesterday, Kansas City voters electer former auditor Mark Funkhouser to be their mayor. (Note that the link above takes you to his blog.) I discussed Funkhouser here. Note that he recently said that Kansas City's plan to build a hockey arena "stinks."

Seems like an interesting fellow. Too bad he can't run here. We could use the competition.

Comments

But there are two versions of this story. One is in the Ravenstahl/Clinton mold, in which mainstream media types are aware of a "rumor," but just can't "prove" it, whether it's about interns or elected officials getting cuffed and stuffed at a football game. Eventually, a blogger catches the scent and just publishes the rumor, forcing the MSM to follow.

But the one I mention here is different. This is basic journalism 101: requesting government documents. A major daily should have been all over that. Why weren't they? All it took was a FOIA request.

This reminds me a bit more of the Dan Rather fiasco, in which a blogger did some simple fact-checking and destroyed an entire story that had already aired.